London

OK, so I thought I had all the instructions locked into my pea brain. I could hear the voices from the Antique BSA Bikers group on the ship telling me some variation of "Take the M20 to the M25 Orbital Ring - keep going east.... or is that west... either one will work so never mind, just keep going till you see the M40 or the A40 north either of them will work also and (wait for it....the most dangerous words in the English vocabulary) "YOU CAN'T MISS IT"
Oh yeah?? Bet I can!!! Uh huh...Yup, I did!!

So I discovered that the M20 and the A20 are related cousins. They share things in common like asphalt, lane indicators, a lot of signs indicating towns, villages, vicarages, boroughs, pathways, pedways and alas, alternates just incase you needed true confusion. The only real difference between the M20 and the A20 at 0430 hrs this wet and cold morning was the inclusion of one very confused Canadian on a motorcycle trying to wipe the rain from his goggles, read a map, avoid trucks, intrepret confusing road signs and, worst of all control himself from following his inner-voice which kept saying "oh, I've always wanted to see ____pickaname___, maybe I should just detour for a few miles..." Did that a couple of times and got thouroughly lost and saw some of the roughest parts of the city. Anyway, 4 long and painful hours later I worked my way through London's early morning rush hour traffic and squirted out the north end of the city on the wrong highway. I didn't care. I just wanted to be the hell out of London by this point.
I should mention. Goretex works! My jacket is a Mountain Equipment Co-op Goretex one and is pretty good at keeping the rain out. It is designed for hikers who encounter rain coming straight down at them. Not designed for rain coming at them horizontally at 120 km/hr and from the ground up and underneath from the tire spray from trucks. The pants I wear are made by Aerostitch. These are tough mothers. I once heard someone say that when they hang their cloths up in the garage to dry, the Aerostich pants get up and boss the other cloths around. I think that might be true! These are outstanding garments though. I highly recommend them.
Other parts of the anatomy get wet on motorcycles and you just have to deal with it. I wear an open faced helmet because I am too stubborn to change and I wear deerskin gloves because they work like a chamois to clean your glasses in the rain. One wipe across the lens and you are good to go. But, after 16 hours of steady rain, the black dye of the gloves made my skin a semi-permanent purple colour. I thought it looked pretty cool, but the folk serving at the truck stop I stopped in at seemed appalled. Sure takes a lot to dry those suckers out!
So, after a very unpleasant morning, I was ready for the marathon!